History Memes

Only if you ignore the specifications mentioned to set the context.

Why the sack of 476 AD? Why not the end of the Republic? Why is the Eastern Roman Empire ignored? What about the Papal State? What about modern Rome that is still a nation’s Capital?

Rome never fell and dinosaurs never went extinct (birds are dinosaurs)!

Well, the point I’m trying to make is that we do not need a boundary here, we can accept that change is gradual.

Rome still exists, it is still a nation’s capital, it has been a seat of power all throughout its history (even when it wasn’t the seat of the (Eestern) Roman Emperor and durimg the era of italian city states, it was the popes’ seat), with the Vatican there is even a state with latin as its official language. And until the end of the tsars’ rules in Russia, there were rulers claming the titel of Roman Emperor.

Rome. Never. Fell. It is a gradual, probably still ongoing and neverending process of transformation. You can say the Roman Empire does not exist anymore. You might even say the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD. But then it’s weird to not also point out that the Roman Republic stopped existing when Gaius Julius Caesar came to total power. Or that the Kingdom of Rome fell in 503 BC.

That's the totality of the context. That's it. That's literally all of it up to that point. What fucking context there is supposed to ward me against the interpretation that you're arguing that the Roman Empire never fell - an argument you are continuing to support in this very comment

Nor does the abdication of an emperor.

Hence why it's an arbitrary cutoff, as mentioned in my first fucking reply to you in this comment chain. Responding that the arbitrary cutoff is invalid because "There were civil wars in the third century AD" doesn't address the core fucking issue that the polity had degraded to the point in 476 where the former institutions no longer existed in most of the Empire, including the city of Rome itself. 476 as an arbitrary cutoff is making a fundamentally different fucking claim about the cohesiveness of the polity than asserting that a civil war is the same variety of disruption.

Again, while I can see that there are arguments for setting a arbitrary cutoff at 476, I argue that it isn’t needed and at the very least I ask if someone wants to have a Fall of Rome, they need to acknowledge that it wasn’t a sudden, catastrophic event but a long, gradual process.

You yourself conceded that I'd traced out the path of the process for 250 years, so I ask again, going back to your initial fucking response - what are you even disputing about my original comment?

I say that birds are dinosaurs because they have dinosaur ancestors. Humans do not have bacterial ancestors (this is the current working model for the domains (of life) AFAIK).

Jesus H. Christ. We're all part of the same clade

For the I don’t know how manieth time, that was a long process and not a sudden event right after 476 because there was no Western Roman Emperor anymore. It happened gradually over decades and centuries and started way before 476!

This fucking you?

Not as a catastrophic event, but in a step of the “evolution”, a change in how the Roman Realm is constituted.

For whom? Some few high ranking politicians, nobility and stuff. Not much for regular people, like farmers, tradesfolk and such. Not even for citizens of the City of Rome. There were sacks before, nothing special.

That's clearly not disputing the date, but disputing the idea that the fall of the Western Empire was catastrophic.

Oh, and in this very fucking comment too, you say:

But that didn’t happen in 476. The “barbarian” kingdoms that formed after the abdication of Augustulis were romanised to the point that Syagrius (kind of roman sounding name) of the Dominion of Soissons was known as “the roman king” by the Germans living in the region and his function was regarded as “governing a roman province”. Soissons was conquered by Franks under Clovis in 486. In Mauretania Caesariensis a “Kingdom of Moors and Romans” (inscription found in ruins dated to 507) supposedly survived into the 7th or 8th century. Even Odoaker regarded himself a roman citizen. He had the assassins of Nepos pursued and executed and assumed power with the backing of the Roman Senate and apparently increased the Senates power. Theoderic the Great ruled the Goth Kingdom of Italy (that extended into parts of Iberia at its height) as a patrician of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Again, no sudden collapse, no widespread catastrophe. Change.

So again, I reiterate - "The collapse of the Roman Empire led to a serious and massive regression in material and organizational culture across a broad swathe of Europe for all classes, not just the rich.

The idea that the Roman Empire didn’t positively and significantly affect the lives of the working class and peasantry which made up the vast majority of its population is not a serious position."

A sack in 410, 455 and a siege in 472. Not like the citicens of Rome never heard of the city being sacked before 476.

... there was no sack of Rome in 476.